For the last few years “Convergence” has been the hot topic in
technology. The idea is that communications, information, entertainment,
financial management and investing will all be handled as digital
streams sorted by the computer. The communications part just took
another step with introduction of two handy new telephone boxes.

The two new boxes, from Actiontec and D-Link, let you make Internet
phone calls directly from your regular telephone set, to anywhere in the
world.

The technology involved is called "VoIP" (Voice Over Internet Protocol).
This has been around for a while but wasn’t quite ready for prime time,
as they say. The payoff is not just phone calls to just about anywhere
in the world for 2-3 cents a minute but absolutely free if the other
party is using “Skype,” the most popular VoIP service.

The Actiontec box www.actiontec.com
is called "Internet Phone Wizard." It lists for $80 and uses Skype
software. We took the box, about the size of two packs of cigarettes,
and connected it between our cable box router and our phone. We then
downloaded Skype, a free program from
www.skype.com, based in Luxembourg. This software lets you make
phone calls over the Internet; the purpose of the Phone Wizard box is so
you can make those calls from your regular phone. While you're on an
Internet call, a regular call can still come through. Just tap the pound
key twice to toggle back and forth.

We followed the simple instructions and made some calls. Some of the
people we spoke with said our call was "breaking up" on their end
initially, but we heard none of this interference on our end. If we’d
wanted to, we also could have used Skype to transfer files from our
computer through the phone; these could have been as large as 3-4
gigabytes.

The D-Link box is cheaper, $50 instead of $80, and has many more
features. Because it is also a router it can handle up to four lines,
letting four people make Internet phone calls at the same time. It also
has a built-in firewall for security against hackers, and comes with one
month's free service from Lingo.

Lingo is a VoIP service from Primus Telecommunications and it has all of
the phone features we've come to expect, like call waiting, caller ID,
"star 69" call back, and call forwarding. It also has a special "do not
disturb" setting that will allow only previously approved calls to come
through, routing others to your answering machine. It and BroadVox
www.broadvox.net, another VoIP
service, are the only two players that claim to provide secure phone
connections, safe from prying ears.

Both Vonage and Lingo charge $15 a month for 500 minutes or $20 a month
for unlimited usage. If you don't use a VoIP router such as the D-Link
device, you need an analog telephone adapter. You can get these from
electronics stores or from the company that provides Internet phone
service.

At&T CallVantage is more expensive and slightly more complex. They will
send a technician to your home or office to install the service, for an
extra charge of $135-$150. We have to guess here, that AT&T, which used
to be "the phone company," is trying desperately to figure out some way
to make money from a business that has been slipping away from them.

Most of these services charge more per minute if you're calling a cell
phone instead of a land-line phone. Skype charges the 2 cent-a-minute
rate for the most popular countries and only charges more for calls to
cell phones in remoter regions. For companies other than Skype, the
difference typically runs anywhere from just a penny more when calling
China, for example, to four times the regular rate when calling cell
phones in Western Europe.

Another thing VoIP services do is skip taxes. Taxes make up about a
third of a regular phone bill, but no part of an Internet telephone
bill. What will politicians, wringing their hands in anguish, do about
this missing revenue? We’re sure they'll think of something.

TV or not TV, that is the question

Here are two new TV providers that aren't quite ready for prime time but
do offer a squint at the future.

The first is East Bay Technologies
www.eastbaytech.com, which claims to offer 1,500 channels (we didn't
try them all) from just about anywhere in the world. You pay $24 for
their software, called "Ctube" for Windows or "Itube" for Macintosh, and
you're off and running. Excuse us -- viewing.

You can watch Russian game shows (Lots of enthusiasm, but hard to follow
unless you speak Russian), interviews with Middle Eastern sheiks (brush
up your Arabic), or some devastatingly funny British celebrity gossip.
In fact, there are so many choices it's hard to choose. Fortunately,
many of the choices are incomprehensible or unviewable. Even with a
pretty fast computer, we could barely recognize people because of the
jerky, grainy pictures on some of the video.

BlinkX, at www.blinkx.tv has
fewer channels but looks like a better service. It's free and no special
software is required; the video was sharp and the sound clear. You can
give it a run yourself just by going to the BlinkX web site and clicking
on a station. They offer some radio programs as well as TV. So far, the
shows are only American, Canadian or British.

BlinkX provides so-called "smart folders." You select the topics you
want to follow and the folders are automatically updated with the latest
video and radio clips that fit. How they do it for free is beyond us.

This is all early days, but you can see "Convergence" comin’ round the
bend. The medium not only carries the message but is the message, as
Marshall McLuhan liked to say.